We Should Pay More Attention to Wildfires

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I’m sure by now you’re used to hearing something new about climate change nearly every day, not to mention the constant surge in articles when another climate disaster hits a country. The whole world gets up in arms, and then we all push it to the back of our heads until the cycle repeats itself. An endless cycle you may say – except this one will eventually reach a very abrupt end, and we will be the ones effected.

Climate change is not something we can just live with and pretend it doesn’t exist. Much like a toddler, the more you ignore it, the louder it’s going to get.

 

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We all saw the headlines about New Yorks ‘orange haze’ last week but a lot of people are failing to see the bigger picture. If you’re like us, you heard about the Canadian Wildfires through news about New York. Why did it take New York turning orange for us to hear about the wildfires?

The wildfires were caused by an exceptionally dry spring due to Canada receiving a low snowfall this winter, on top of a heatwave pushing unnatural temperatures for this time of the year.Do you remember the 2019-2020 wildfires in Australia in which nearly 6,382 koalas died during the 2019/2020 bushfires? That’s nearly 15% of the population. Then there were the Russia wildfires in 2020, and the 2019 Siberia wildfires.

It’s most likely that everyone read about them at the time and fell into the never ending cycle of forgetting about it until the next big disaster.

 

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Wildfires are caused by high temperatures, humidity, and the lack of moisture in fuels, such as trees, shrubs, grasses, and forest debris. All these factors have strong direct or indirect ties to climate variability and climate change. This is why we need to pay more attention to wildfires and the true meaning behind them, the state of our world and our future home is at great risk. In case you needed a reminder of some more events you probably did not realise were caused by climate change;

Rain fell at the summit of Greenland instead of snow for the first time ever in August of 2021 because of the worlds temperatures getting warmer. An entire town was wiped out in Canada because of a wildfire caused by climate change, imagine waking up one morning and watching the place you grew up in burn to the ground.

In the US, flooding trapped and killed residents in New York in submerged basements due to the unnatural heavy downpour of rain. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and health professionals worldwide are already responding to the health harms caused by this unfolding crisis.

We must understand that climate change is much more than extreme weather events. In a 20 year gap it is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.

 

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We are responsible for what happens next, and we hold our future in our hands. We’ve got to realise that these extreme events are not a coincidence, and every time you hear of a new one it should only serve as a reminder of the imposing climate emergency.

Don’t just ignore it until the next one hits your social media feed or makes the headlines in your local news.

Visit here for 10 ways you can help fight the climate crisis.

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